Gulliver's Travels

Rating:
Summary: An excellent restoration
Review: "Gulliver's Travels" has never looked better. Restored color and sound (with a few sound effects thrown in) makes all the work worthwhile. This classic was a childhood favorite of mine.
Also added are a few of the old "Gabby" cartoons.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent restoration
Review: "Gulliver's Travels" has never looked better. Restored color and sound (with a few sound effects thrown in) makes all the work worthwhile. This classic was a childhood favorite of mine.
Also added are a few of the old "Gabby" cartoons.

Rating:
Summary: poor version
Review: A couple of years ago I purchased the 60th Anniversary Edition of this classic Fleischer cartoon on VHS. It was digitally re-mastered and was a beautiful print. HOWEVER, this version, THE DVD VERSION is of very poor quality. The dub is scratchy at best and is more often than not, washed out.
The film starts out without the opening credits and we noticed entire scenes have been deleted (as if taken from a bad film version that had been spliced together). ... Apparently, the 60th anniversary re-mastered edition is not available on DVD (at least I cannot find it). Your kids may be entertained but if you consider yourself a Fleischer fan or an animation fan, you will find THIS DVD VERSION very disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Winstar outdoes them selves with this greatly restored DVD!
Review: First let me say that I am not a big fan of Winstar products, but they have done the restoration job on this title that they promised. The 60th Anniversary Edition image is so sharp and pure that I got rid of my Republic Laserdisc that came from their studio masters. As typical with Winstar, they created a new stereo soundtrack, but THEY HAVE INCLUDED THE ORIGINAL MONO TRACK! I would suggest selecting the original mono track, their stereo track is distracting.
This Winstar DVD IS the ULTIMATE RESTORATION of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS on DVD!!!

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite animated films
Review: Fleischer's 1939 animated feature "Gulliver's Travels" delivers! My kids request it all the time, and I cannot help being drawn into it every time its playing. Comparisons with Disney being inevitable, I believe that this is a case were the underdog matches the abilities of its powerful rival. The opening song "All's Well" is as catchy as any musical tune - including Snow White's "Hi Ho". The attention to 3-D effect and other visual detail is mind-boggling. The moral message of toleration and compromise is very well developed, and, in view of its sophisticated source in Jonathan Swift, the point is anything but trivial. Parents on the lookout for a great lesser-known animated film for their children should be delighted with this - as with Fleischer's other animated feature "Hoppity Goes to Town". This DVD edition restores the work to pristine condition. It comes with extra Gabby shorts, which draw on the same settings and characters; this was a nice surprise. The other bonus features were also enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Historically interesting, but nothing more
Review: Gulliver's Travels is interesting to any student of animation history, but frankly, there's a good reason why this movie failed and Snow White succeeded. Technical prowess notwithstanding, it offered none of the "magic" -- the fun -- that people look for in great animated stories. Calling Gulliver's character "dull" is being kind. Every other character is either boring or irritating -- and boring or irritating your audience is never a good thing. The music is trite as well. To top it all off, the restoration is of very poor quality, making the film hard to watch even if you do find the story interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A Neglected Animated Gem
Review: Here's a wonderful offering from the Fleischer Studio, creators of Betty Boop and Koko the Clown, and producers of the original Popeye and Superman cartoons. The Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, also put out the first sound cartoon, an animated sing-along with their trademark bouncing ball that highlighted the lyrics to the audience. They also experimented with some truly effective special affects such as combining live action and animation, and the Three-Dimensional Setback which was a tiny stage with animation cels hung in front to create a convincing illusion of dimension. One of their inventions, the Rotoscope, is still in use today.

The Fleischer Studio was active between 1919 and 1942, after which they folded due to increased competition from Disney. By then features were the norm, and to meet this demand the Fleischers made two, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (1939) and the rarely seen HOPPITY GOES TO TOWN (1941), originally known as MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN. They were unable to make back the money put into these, so Paramount foreclosed their loan, took over the studio, and fired the Fleischers. Later on the brothers recouped as Famous Studios but never quite regained the sparkle and innovation of their earlier days.

Timing wasn't on their side. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was made after another great animated film hit the theaters, the one with the seven short guys and a wicked witch and a girl who wanders the forest. SNOW WHITE of course has become a legend of animation; in comparison GULLIVER'S TRAVELS fairly languishes and too bad. Here's a noteworthy production that deserves its due.

There's a noticeable distinction between the animation styles of Disney and Fleischer. The Fleischer style appears more arty, with stylized figures and backgrounds and lighting affects which I can only describe as "Max Parrishesque." Gorgeous clouds and seas, and a rather glowing affect infused throughout. The night scenes with Gabby and his lantern are especially effective, and the shadowing is superb. Compared to SNOW WHITE, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS moves at a rather leisurely pace and the story is more expansive. There's plenty to grow on you, too. From the catchy tunes and the cute characters, to a towering, striking Gulliver with the brooding, thoughtful soul of a poet combined with the spunk and spirit of a true adventurer.

Rating:
Summary: A sheer marvel, sustaining comparison with Disney's
Review: I discovered Dave Fleisher's Gulliver long ago, when first released in France, in 1980 or so. It was a shock to discover that Disney's creations were not the one and only! Unfortunetely, this pure wonder remains widely ignored on this side of the Atlantic, as well as "Mr Bug goes to town"...(by the way, when will the DVD of this cartoon be released?). No promotion whatesoever; just some VHS very cheep - thus unconvincing for most people - accasional editions could be obtained... a shame!

The present restored edition, accompanied with vintage stuff, such as a brilliant explanation on the making of cartoons is a must have.

Rating:
Summary: GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Review: I have always liked this film ever since I saw in on television
40 years ago. In the 1960s it was re-released for Saturday matinees, and I saw it for the first time in its Technicolor splendor in 1968. The potential for a big screen epic is certainly there. But over the years, Ive come to realize it's many shortcommings as well. The basic problem is that the feature does not develop the leading characters well. The personality of Gulliver seems too mild. His voice, by Sam Parker, does not have enough personality or character. Afterall, he was supposed to have been an Englishman. Instead he sounds like a poor man's Bing Crosby. Consider the possibilities if they had used Croby. After all, he was a Paramount contract player then. The central plot is about a silly war that is fought over which national anthem is to be played at the wedding of Prince David of Blefescu and Princess Glory of Lilliput. The audience is not given story material to establish these characters in order to

create any sympathy for them, especiall when the war threatens their union. What the film does do well is develop broad comedy supporting characters in the style Fleischer Studios was famous for. And in keeping with Max Fleischer's link to technical gimmics, Gabby's voice is produced in the same speeded up recording process used for the Munchkins in THE WIZARD OF OZ. In fact, Vance "Pinto" Colvig, who was the voice for the "Mayor of the Munkckin City"(using his "Goofy" voice done for Walt Disney) played back 50% faster than normal, is the voice for Gabby. Other elements of the Fleischer genre deal with construction
sequences, such as the building of the scaffold and wheeled platform that lift and transport GULLIVER to the center of town.
The second, and my most favorite, is the "It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day" sequence, where the Lilliputians make Gulliver a new suit of clothes. Sequences involving gadgets, and technical/construction processes were elements in many of the Fleischer cartoons, which they did very well. But technical sequences aside, the Fleischer animators were doing something they had not prepared for, personality animation. They were hard-pressed to maintain consistancy in the quality from one sequence to the next. Part of this was due to the rushed schedule, but mostly due to inexperience in creating believable and sympathetic characters that the audience could care about within a 70 minute structure. Oddly, the central characters, Gulliver, Prince David, and Princess Glory are more realistic-derived from Rototscoping, (Max Fleischer's premier animation invention) and are the least interesting characters, where the best characters are the cartoony supporting charaters, Gabby, King Little, and King Bombo.
This was not the only animated feature produced by Fleischer Studios.... Their second feature, "Mr. Bug Goes to Town," a.k.a. HOPPITY GOES TO TOWN, overcame the animation problems, and was produced more efficiently, but still suffered from bland, underdeveloped leading characters. Still it is impressive and very beautiful to see. THIS was really the best thing next to the first nine SUPERMANS that the Fleischer Studios did. The Fleischer Studios' venture into features and greater personality animation was not so much an effort to imitate Disney was it was to move forward with the development
of the medium. The Fleischer's, once an innovators in the field, had remained locked into a formula that did not allow their animation to develop by the mid 1930s. As personality animation and greater drawing and design was moving forward on the west coast, the Fleischer cartoons continued to have an old fashioned look to them by the end of the decade. It was no wonder that when faced with doing an epic like GULLIVER'S TRAVELS they were faced with challenges they had not prepared for as Disney had done with his Silly Symphonies. But give them credit. They learned, but it's a shame that it came too late.

Rating:
Summary: Music fans of Paramount Pictures "Gulliver's Travels"
Review: I just want everyone to know that the song, 'Faithful, Forever' from "Gulliver's Travels" was recently recorded by Pop vocalist, Michael Poss. It's on Michael's new CD release entitled "Silver Screen Serenades" from Twilight Souls Music. You can order it through this website.